August 07, 2008

Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Program

by Eric Martin

As expected, the Iraqi parliament failed to pass a provincial elections law, thus pushing the elections themselves back to some point in 2009 (hopefully). The reason that the Iraqi legislature is having such a tough time agreeing on an election law is that the disagreements over the parameters of the law represent the larger, as yet unreconciled, political conflicts - the conflicts that the Surge was supposed to help solve as its central mission, a mission that has thus far been a failure.

The Bush administration has been pushing for this new round of provincial elections for good reason: many of the former Sunni insurgents that have joined the Awakenings framework (and their constituents) boycotted the prior rounds of elections and so they lack a political voice on the local level (and national). In fact, in some majority Sunni regions, Shiites hold the elected offices, which exacerbates the sense of alienation from, and anxiety about, the Iraq's political system in the post-Baath era. The Awakenings groups are demanding a share of political power (and the patronage rights that affords) in exchange for their continued buy-in to the non-violent process. So the question arises, what now? Will the Sunnis' forbearance continue? Will the Iraqi government share?

Marc Lynch, who was previously optimistic that various factions would agree on a reasonably acceptable, just election law is giving in to pessimism. Or as I would argue, the grim reality:

The anger among the Awakenings movements is already palpable. The New York Times quotes Ali Hatem Suleiman saying that “We are running out of patience,” and Sheik Hamid al-Hayis saying “This is a slap on the face of Iraq... we couldn’t make a big change in the government structure. That pushed us to work to make change in the provincial council. But even that we can’t touch.” Dr. iRack, just back from Iraq, reports that the notoriously outspoken Ali Hatem "is deadly serious about returning to war against all the Islamic parties (Sunni and Shia) if the Awakening groups are not given the power they think they deserve."

Leaders of the Awakenings have been warning that they are "losing patience" and "the next few months will be decisive" so many times that I suspect some people have stopped taking them seriously. As with the evident nonchalance about the prospects of the major Sunni insurgency factions flipping back to the other side, this seems to rest on a notion that they have nowhere else to go and that there is neither the ability nor the desire to go back to the insurgency ("we don't need to accommodate those hoodlums," pace General Keane). This strikes me as a very dangerous bit of best-case scenario thinking, of a kind which hurt American efforts in the past and has continued to mar the analysis of surge cheerleaders throughout. There are all kinds of warning lights blinking, from both the Awakenings and from the insurgency factions whose members make up many of their cadres outside of Anbar...

As Lynch points out, it's not just the failure to pass an elections law that is pushing the Awakenings crowd to the brink: (a) the Maliki government has been reluctant to integrate Awakenings militia members into the Iraqi Security Forces (or other civil functions); (b) rejectionist Sunni insurgents have been attacking Awakenings members relentlessly; (c) Iraqi government forces have actually begun targeting Awakenings members as well; and (d) Awakenings members are complaining that the US is not providing them with enough funding and military support. This is serious.

While the Awakenings push, coupled with the Surge, might have bought some time and space, the clock is running out. Now the Bush administration is going to have to reckon with its strategy of building up power nodes outside of the Iraqi government. The hope all along has been that the Maliki government would integrate these outsider Sunni elements, but the Maliki government doesn't appear to have any such intention (what a shock!). And the various parties can't agree on an elections law to help broach part of that divide. The Surge didn't change that. The same political fault lines that existed between Sunnis and Shiites pre-Surge remain, and they will generate violent conflict in the future absent some dramatic change of heart on the part of the Shiite power structure. This is true even if some cheerleaders rashly declare that the Sunni-Shiite conflict is "over."

The other major issue that the regional elections law was supposed to address was the means for determining the status of Kirkuk. The failure to agree on a political mechanism to settle the question of whether or not Kirkuk will be incorporated into Kurdistan has led the Kurds to threaten to annex Kirkuk outside of the legal framework. Tensions are flaring, violence is on the uptick and the Kurds are moving troops in and around the region. Again, the Surge has not helped the various parties to reach an acceptable accord on this contentious issue. Absent a political solution, violence will determine the outcome.

Which brings the discussion back to the argument many of us were making prior to the Surge. The logic of the Surge - that all the Iraqi people needed was a reduction in violence in order to reach an acceptable political accommodation on a whole host of vital issues - was backwards. Iraqis were not unable to achieve the necessary political accords because there was violence, there was violence because Iraqis were not able to achieve the necessary political accords.

Comments

Eric, how much do you think the movements of the Iraqi parties are currently constrained by awaiting the outcome of the U.S. elections?

It certainly seems logical that the strategy of each of the parties is highly dependent upon who becomes our next President. If Obama, troops will leave (which could either allow for reconciliation or open up the battlefield). If McCain, troops will stay (allowing for some continued violence suppression, but angering large swaths of the Iraqi population and potentially providing enough frustration to spur them to violence).

I hate to tell you this, Eric, but according to Expert on Iraq http://www.peterheck.com/>Peter Heck, The Surge worked and anyone who says otherwise "aids and abets our enemy."

Unfortunately, Heck is the biggest local talk radio in the area and it would appear a lot of people take him seriously when he says things like Thomas Jefferson was a biblical literalist.

Depressing idiots aside, do you think that withdrawing withing ~16mos is a good idea for the Iraqis? Or will our staying there be better for them? Both questions are mostly in reference to what's best for the political process, since that's the topic at hand, but I'd be interested in hearing about their general welfare (safety, quality of life, etc.) too.

Eric, how much do you think the movements of the Iraqi parties are currently constrained by awaiting the outcome of the U.S. elections

I think that there are definitely factions that have decided to "wait out" the Bush administration. Plus, the Surge convinced them to pull back on operations.

Sadr is doing this. Many of the Awakenings groups are doing this. And importantly, Maliki is doing this. But that pause won't last for long. And I'm dubious about whether or not political reconciliation will flow from either outcome in November.

Depressing idiots aside, do you think that withdrawing withing ~16mos is a good idea for the Iraqis? Or will our staying there be better for them? Both questions are mostly in reference to what's best for the political process, since that's the topic at hand, but I'd be interested in hearing about their general welfare (safety, quality of life, etc.) too.

Withdrawing troops might force Maliki and others to make the real compromises necessary to make abandoning violence acceptable. Currently, he and his cohorts are able to push an uncompromising agenda, safe in the knowledge that the US military is around to take care of the opposition. Our only credible leverage is through withdrawal.

Now, even if we withdraw, Maliki et al may not be persuaded to compromise (and some Sunni groups might not be looking for a compromise-type deal regardless), and so a flare in violence could very well occur (I believe it will, personally).

But if the latter scenario is the more accurate description of the calculus of Maliki and certain Sunni groups, well, us sticking around for ten more years will do little other than keep violence on a low boil for a prolonged period, rather than a high boil over a short term span.

One of the things that the "if we leave, they're will be genocide" crowd fails to acknowledge is that even with us in country for the past 5+ years, roughly half a million Iraqis have died and another 5 million have been internally or externally displaced. A steady drip of the supposed worst case scenarios that would befall Iraq upon our departure.

Then there's the fact that our soldiers do end up killing a lot of Iraqis while performing their missions - many of which include targeting certain Iraqi factions for elimination. And the fact that our presence inspires foreigners to come to Iraq to fight us there, which is destabilizing. And portions of the domestic population are being radicalized by our presence.

So we help to contain the violence that we also help to spur on, and we keep a lid on civil wars that we unleashed and exacerbated. And we faciliate uncompromising stances by Iraq's ruling factions.

Nevertheless, many Iraqis believe that things will get worse if we leave, and I don't think they're wrong entirely. Then again, the situation will only normalize after we leave. Even if only after a bloodletting.

Then again, the situation will only normalize after we leave. Even if only after a bloodletting.

Yeah, I was just about to say, I have a strong feeling that the Awakening crowd will eventually be grinded between the opposing jaws of the regime in Baghdad and Sunni insurgent/Islamist groups. They look an awful lot like local cooperators who've done what the occupying power wanted, and are now being forgotten about. Comparisons to France in Algeria are overrated, but I wonder if these guys aren't in a similar position to the harkis back in the day.

Taking the view that the point of the "Surge" was more about domestic politics than Iraq, then it has been a success. Right wing blowhards get to pretend everything is wonderful, and the war has gone off the front page.

But these problems (elections, Kirkuk) have been festering for years now, and have always been predictable blowups. It is another example of how brain dead the strategy and discussion is about Iraq. It remains focused on domestic political concerns rather than any particular understanding of goals or accomplishments there.

Jeff- The sad thing is that he's a teacher at a local HS. The really sad thing is that he teaches AP Government.

Eric- Damned if we do, damned if we don't. But your summary: So we help to contain the violence that we also help to spur on, and we keep a lid on civil wars that we unleashed and exacerbated. And we faciliate uncompromising stances by Iraq's ruling factions.
makes me think that since we have to leave sooner or later (realistically, at least, 100yrs isn't an option), I'd rather see an ugly spike now rather than a steady beat of low-key violence for 5 more years.

Yeah, that and the fact that it costs us 10 billion a month, is breaking our military, we're losing hundreds of soldiers a year on the battlefield and thousands more to injury, we're ginning up anti-Americanism around the globe, we're neglecting a myriad of other crucial issues (foreign and domestic), we're providing a recruitment tool (and state of the art training facility) to al-Qaeda and like minded terrorists, etc.

The sad thing is that he's a teacher at a local HS. The really sad thing is that he teaches AP Government.

I'd love for one of his students to question the success of the "Surge", and when accused of "aiding and abetting the enemy" ask him flat out if he's accusing the student of being a traitor. For real fun, go to the Principal and the Superintendant of Schools and ask why this teacher is calling a student a traitor for asking a question.

This is all an example of why, back when McCain's conflation of the Surge and the Awakening was happening, a few commenters pointed out that the Awakening was not in any way part of COIN.
There was never any atempt either by the Iraqi leadership, nor by the American Overlords, to bring the sheiks into the government.
Another example of McCain's total deficit in the knowledge, awareness and judgement areas.